Day of reckoning for state prisons

The federal judiciary has long taken a dim view of California’s extremely overcrowded prison system, and Monday that view was hammered home by a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding an appeals court ruling that will require the state to release or transfer about 33,000 prisoners. State officials have two years to reduce the number of prisoners in the system from about 143,000 to 110,000, which would still be 137.5 percent of capacity.

There is nothing to be gained by grousing about the high court’s indifference to pleas from the state that it be given more time to reduce overcrowding, as well as its disregarding warnings that releasing this many convicts could lead to a sharp spike in crime. Instead, Gov. Jerry Brown, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and local governments already slated to take over the jailing of some low-risk offenders need to work quickly and cohesively to come up with a workable plan that ensures the most dangerous criminals remain behind bars.

Unless California wants to provoke the federal courts again, the plan must also provide for adequate physical and mental health care for prisoners. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s decision that the state’s system was cruel and unusual was driven by evidence indicating that more than 100 state inmates died in 2008 and 2009 due to poor medical care and that state inmates kill themselves twice as often as the national average.

Whatever the state’s many other problems – which truly do complicate efforts to reduce prison overcrowding – no one should dispute that our prisons are in shameful shape.